Karl Ilmer

Il’mer, Karl Petrovich 

Born Dec. 25,1891 (Jan. 6, 1892), in the settlement of Ligatne, in present-day Cesis Raion, Latvian SSR; died Mar. 12, 1919, in Tomsk. Was active in the revolutionary movement in Latvia and Russia. Became a member of the Communist Party in 1908. A worker and the son of a worker. Graduated from a mining school.

In 1905, Il’mer was a member of a detachment of armed workers. He was a member of the Riga committee of the party from 1911; from early 1914 he did party work in Baku. He was banished to Narym Krai in 1914 and in 1916 escaped to Petrograd. He worked in the Bolshevik military organization and, after the February Revolution of 1917, for the Lettish workers’ newspaper Cina (Struggle). After the October Revolution, he was commissar of provisions for the Alexander Nevsky district of Petrograd. In December 1917 he was sent to Siberia to get provisions for Petrograd; he was a member of the Western Siberia Oblast soviet and commissar of provisions for Akmolinsk Oblast. After the temporary collapse of Soviet power in Omsk (June 1918), he was engaged in underground work in Tomsk, heading the committee of the RCP (Bolshevik) and preparing an armed uprising to overthrow the regime of Admiral Kolchak. In March 1919 he was arrested by Kolchak’s forces. He died during brutal torture. He is buried in Tomsk in a common grave on Revolution Square.

REFERENCE

Geroi Oktiabria, vol. 1. Leningrad, 1967.